


A sip of poison

by kinglyace



Category: Death Stranding (Video Games)
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Whump, posioning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-06
Updated: 2020-02-06
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:16:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22588537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kinglyace/pseuds/kinglyace
Summary: Sam doesn't think about who brings him the Monster drinks when he stays at private rooms. He doesn't think about who handles them, despite the dangerous times.Maybe he really should.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 45





	A sip of poison

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: An anon was gracious enough to give me a prompt when I asked but this took much longer than I wanted between university work and suddenly getting sick. But now it's done, so enjoy!

He can still taste the Monster from this morning all over his mouth, a cloying bitterness that coats his tongue and teeth. It almost feels like there’s a thin layer of film over everything and no matter how much he swallows, it won’t go away. He wonders, briefly, if he got a bad batch. It would explain the headache that’s been slowly growing worse as he walks, a consistent throb spreading from the base of his neck and to his forehead. His thoughts feel fuzzy, too frayed at the edges to grab while one eyelid seems determined to slide shut. 

His stomach rolls as he slides down a rocky slope, boots glancing off two large protruding boulders and making him tip precariously to the right. He grunts, grabs at the shoulder strap and tries to correct himself. It kind of works but he goes too far the other way and he stumbles right over a knot in the hillside. He doesn’t go far, just lands painfully on his hip and winces as his cargo crashes around him. Lou whines, hiccuping pitifully as she’s jostled around in her pod.

“Sorry,” he sighs, patting at the pod as he slowly rolls back to his feet. His head throbs every time he has to bend over to grab one of his packages, his vision swimming just slightly. 

He starts sweating after another twenty minutes, the backpack biting more than usual into his shoulders. It feels like he’s starting to cook inside his own suit, an uncomfortable heat that boils his stomach and spreads to his fingertips like wildfire. Taking a dip into the river starts to sound like a good idea as sweat drips down the side of his face, drenching the collar of his undershirt. 

He’s miserable, from head to toe the more he walks. The ache in his joints won’t go away, complaining as he pushes on. His head feels like it’s both full of cotton and hot liquid at the same time, while his stomach lurches with every uneven step. 

Sam finally admits something is wrong right around the three hour mark, after his fifth spill and tripping into the river. Even though the sky is clear, he decides to park himself right under a sad looking Timefall shelter that hasn’t been repaired in a while. He’s only an hour from South Knot but the thought of taking another step makes him gag. The ground keeps slightly tipping beneath him, as if he were sitting in the bed of a truck rather than on solid ground.

His cuff rings, the familiar notes signaling that it’s Deadman calling him this time. He manages to lift his wrist up, but the cuff feels heavy on his arm this time. Or maybe that was just his arm that felt heavy.

“Sam, there you are! I was concerned that you wouldn’t answer- your vitals are throwing up some very strange readings and I couldn’t decipher if it was because of a bad data transmission or not,” Deadman babbles the moment their cuffs connect. Sam only hears maybe half the words, focusing on making the image of Deadman’s head not spin around in front of his eyes. It’s dizzying, like trying to watch only one blade of a ceiling fan spin.

“Sam, can you understand me? Your organs are showing elevated signs of distress but nothing in the data indicates why. Did you do anything out of the norm or ingest something strange?” Deadman calmly asks but the words are hard to parse, like they’re coming from underwater.

“Monster tasted funny,” Sam manages to groan, slowly tilting to the side until his cheek meets the ground in a rush. Lou blubbers, twisting to look at him accusingly with narrowed beady eyes through her pod. He musters up a half-hearted apology, muttered through gravel seeping into the corner of his mouth. He can’t hear Deadman anymore through the rising tide of high-pitched ringing filling his ears. The world finally goes fuzzy around him, the landscape reduced to a smear of brown and grey. His skin prickles, hair standing on end as rain starts to softly fall around him and the shelter. It takes him a moment too long to remember that there shouldn’t be rain and there shouldn’t be one lone black figure walking towards him. He can barely make them out among the mist and rocks, a phantom his sluggish mind recognizes but the rest of him is too slow to react.

“My, my, lookee here. The Legendary Porter himself, falling over himself at the very sight of me!” 

The familiar gold mask is too close, hovering an inch before his nose while a boot plants itself on his shoulder. There’s no pain, just a numbing sort of pressure that extends itself down his arm and up to his head. 

“You know, part of me thought ‘Sam can’t be stupid enough to drink poison’. I’d think after the little bomb incident you’d learn not to take random things from strangers,” Higgs starts to monologue, savoring the words as he sneers. He pushes away, relishing Sam’s pained grunt while he twirls his gun around.

“And here I thought I wouldn’t get to have any fun,” he laughs, cutting through the fog clouding Sam’s brain. Sure he drank Monster this morning, but it’d been from the distro. Had appeared in his room from one of the distro workers… labeled with a little pink sticky note with a smiley drawn on it. He’d thought nothing of it then but now he faintly wonders if it was Higgs himself this time or another Homo Demens rat. 

“Poison? You’re gonna kill me… with that shit?” Sam demands, raspy as it becomes a chore to draw in a deep breath. This seems dramatic even for Higgs.

“Oh no, it won’t kill you- not yet. This is just to give my friends an advantage.”

His skin starts to ache before Higgs summons them, only slightly dulled from whatever poison he’d drank. The ground turns wet, black tar bubbling up from beneath as the rain turned from mist to a driving downpour. The shelter he’s under groans, starts to wobble and threatens to disappear completely as the tar spreads. 

Sam tries to drag himself up, to give himself a fighting chance but every thread seems cut off from him. It’s like trying to guide a tangled puppet around with only one string. He hears Higgs laugh, hyena-like, as he barely manages to crawl a few inches. 

“You just never give up, do you?”

Something grabs him by the ankle, burning through his suit as it tries to drag Sam away. He can barely count how many B.T's there are, just sees a swarm rear up to scream and swallow him whole. He closes his eyes, waits for them to pull him away into the waiting jaws of a Lion or Squid.

The sound of a hand grenade exploding interrupts the coming carnage, drenching Sam and several B.T’s in blood. They drop him without hesitation, screeching as another grenade goes off right next to him. Gunfire comes next, bullets ricocheting off rock as Higgs curses. He screams something, a curse or a taunt Sam can’t tell, before he’s cut off by a spectacular sounding boom. 

Sam’s cracks an eyelid to see fuzzy grey shapes running up to the shelter. He can’t see Higgs anymore, either lost among the roiling black tar or run off with his tail between his legs. The B.T’s are running, convulsing as blood bullets and grenades rain down on them. The fuzzy grey shapes holler to him, but he can’t make out much anymore. Just the constant beating of rain as everything gets swallowed up by pitch black nothingness. 

~~

Dying isn’t pleasant by any stretch of the imagination, but sometimes it’s preferable to the deep ache that comes with recovery. The dull pain is enough to edge him towards wakefulness, though all he wants is to sleep. 

Dull lighting beats down on his eyelids and music plays softly from somewhere across the room. There’s a blanket drawn right up to his chin, and a cool compress weighing his head down. He slowly opens one, only to find himself in an empty private room. No one here besides himself and Lou, who gurgles happily from across the room when she spots him. His suit is hung up in the case, boots neatly set beside his rack. He’s still pretty grimy, but he’s fine with that.

He lays there for a few minutes, letting his brain wake up as his senses crawl back one by one. There’s still a persistent ache but it’s closer to the burn from working instead of being in searing pain. The light burns his eyes a little, but the throbbing in his head is only slight. His stomach isn’t doing flips either- he actually feels a little hungry.

There’s a chime as he sits up, the air shimmering before Deadman’s chiralgram pops up. He smiles at Sam, excitedly gesturing with his hands.

“Sam! I’m so glad you’re awake! How are you feeling?” Deadman rattles off, stepping closer to try and get a better look at him. Sam only leans slightly back, feeling the chiral matter in the air make his skin prickle.

“Better,” he grunts, trying to find somewhere to look other than Deadman’s face. He notices a distinct lack of Monster on the table next to his bed.

“You’re very lucky Sam. If it wasn’t for those Porters, you’d surely be waking up in a crater right now. I had no idea Higgs and the Homo Demens infiltrated another one of our distro’s.”

“You mean other Porters saved my ass? Even with the B.T’s?”

“Lots of people have gotten much braver now, because of you. Leaving blood grenades and ammo at post boxes is very gracious- now a few others can also defend themselves. It’s why they were able to drive Higgs off,” Deadman explais, twisting his wrist. The music in the room stops, replaced with a cuff recording. Sam can’t make out much through the yelling and B.T screaming, but the distinct sound of explosions jogs his memory. 

They’d come to his rescue, despite the danger. Despite knowing B.T’s could have dragged them down too or Higgs shooting them himself. For him, they’d risked their lives.

“They brought me here?”

“Correct. They were even able to stop the poison from killing you, with a little help. Apparently charcoal is a very old school way of dealing with ingested toxins. They didn’t stay, but I’m sure you’ll cross paths with them again,” Deadman gestured to the table. Hidden just beneath a bottle of clear water, was a little note with only one thing written on it: Keep on keepin’ on.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Writing Higgs was the hardest part of this so I'm blaming the delay on his rat ass.


End file.
